Process Video of Me Working on Jacob's Apartment

The Tell Tale Cough Comic!

I was fortunate enough to get hired by a Kristin Royer to do a short comic for part of her project in which she wrote a bunch of hilarious and darkly twisted takes on the death of Edgar Allen Poe. It was an awesome project, so I'd encourage you to check out my comic "The Tell Tale Cough" as well as quite a few other awesome cartoonist's takes on her fantastic stories by clicking here: http://www.nevermorecomic.com/

Here's a sample of what my comic looks like (read the rest at the above link):

Another Illustration for Willamette Week

I'm excited to have been hired on for another crazy fast rush illustration for the Willamette Week. Hopefully this will become a weekly gig, but we'll see!

Here's the illustration:

Here's the illustration as it appeared in the Willamette Week:

Seems like a re-inforcement that it's important to please your clients as an illustrator, and make deadline, even if it's insanely quick. If you do, they tend to come back for more!

Page 82 Process Pictures

I'm working on page 82 for my graphic novel Jacob's Apartment, and thought I'd post my process again. I usually start out with super loose roughs (on the right). On this page, I thought I'd revise the top plan for the panel, in order to fit some of the text from page 81 that I thought made that page too busy into the first panel of this page. This caused a minor change to the layout. I then ruled out my panel borders, inking them with a micron, then did quick pencils. I used to labor over my pencils a lot more than I do now. As you can see, I leave the pencils relatively loose, due to the fact that I can get more detailed with the inking:

I then start inking with micron pens, the contour line work in the panel.

Then I use my pentel pocket brush pen to add fills, and lines which require brush work:

Once I've completed inking all of the panels, I erase the underlying pencil marks, then use a brush to clean off the page:

Then I scan the page into the computer, which looks like this:

I then use gausian blur, and curves in greyscale mode in photoshop to solidify the blacks in my inks... Then I convert the file to CMYK, and use channels to separate the black lines from the white:

Once the inks are separated, I then begin coloring... This is what the ink layer looks like while I'm coloring:

I flat and render underneath the inks on a separate layer in photoshop... Here's what it looks like without the line layer:

This is what the final color file looks like:

I then add my text bubbles and type, and thus create the final page:

I hope this has been helpful, or interesting to those of you guys reading my blog... If so, I'll keep doing these occasionally!

Vote for my New Threadless Design!

It's finally up for voting, so check it out, and if you'd like this printed as a shirt, cast your vote! If I win, it'll be some nice extra cash for my fiance and I as well!